A conversation mashup with Biren Shah March 24, 2016 | Expressive Change | Conversation| 3 Comments “It is only when we don’t have a social purpose that we’re truly serving the world.” That’s a pretty mind-bending statement, especially for those of us who are working in social purpose organizations. What exactly do you mean? Read More A conversation with Dayna Cunningham February 23, 2015 | Expressive Change | Tana Paddock| No Comments I’m just finishing up a fascinating six-week on-line course on Theory U. I found this 10-minute excerpt from Otto Scharmer’s interview with Dayna Cunningham particularly moving. She shares about her experience as a civil rights lawyer and how she came to understand the importance of developing an individual and collective capacity for empathy in social change work. Read More A personal journey to a new way of working September 21, 2017 | Expressive Change | Peter Brownell| No Comments Over the course of a year I had been trying to find ways to encourage my team to self-organise. We created roles, adopted structured meeting formats, had many discussions. We made progress, but nothing significant changed. Over the course of this work I found that the problem was not them… it was me. Read More In memory of Penny August 5, 2010 | Expressive Change | Warren Nilsson| 4 Comments Last Saturday, Tana and I went to the funeral of Penny Parkes. We had gotten to know Penny through our work with Santropol Roulant. She was a client, volunteer, and board member there and reflected the spirit of the place in a beautiful and charming way all her own. Penny struggled with a degenerative disease, […] Read More Becoming human through human-centered design March 9, 2015 | Expressive Change | Rachel Griner| After years of practice, a pivotal moment came when I realized human-centered design could actually be an expression of our humanity. To drive true innovation, I could blur the line between designer and user and create the space for us all to advance our human potential. This happened during my Executive on Loan assignment to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Read More Calling in November 2, 2014 | Expressive Change | Tana Paddock| No Comments This provocative essay on Black Girl Dangerous sheds light on how the oppressive social patterns that we’re trying to change ‘out there’ inevitably live inside us and our social movements, no matter how hard we try to chase them out. Author Ngọc Loan Trần invites fellow activists to engage with these patterns more consciously and lovingly in order to be a stronger force for change. Read More In praise of dreams and magic November 29, 2012 | Expressive Change | Fahri Karakas| Time is ticking. There is less than half an hour until my teaching starts at Norwich Business School at the University of East Anglia. I am in my office trying to focus and prepare for my afternoon lecture of “Management Skills and Personal Development” course for about 200 students. I feel terrified. […] Read More Intimacy October 24, 2016 | Expressive Change | Akaya Windwood| 2 Comments It is becoming increasingly clear to me that social change, when done well, is an intimate act. For many years, I was taught to ignore my feelings and intuition, and to develop unassailable plans and irrefutable theories to explain and legitimize my work. These days, I don’t […] Read More Listening to the head, heart & feet July 25, 2017 | Expressive Change | Warren Nilsson| For inscaping to be a robust organizational practice, we need to refine our listening skills so that we learn to listen at an experiential level. Listening with the ‘head, heart and feet as described by the Barefoot Guide Connection is a very helpful tool to practice this. It helps us to listen ‘between the lines’ and ‘beneath the main text’, to hear not just what people are saying, but what they are trying to say or […]. Read More Multiply wounded July 12, 2012 | Expressive Change | Warren Nilsson & Tana Paddock| 4 Comments We recently came across an illuminating talk by Nicaraguan psychologist Martha Cabrera- Living and Surviving in a Multiply Wounded Country. In her talk, she describes the uniquely holistic approach to societal healing that she and her team developed over a decade of experimental work in Nicaragua. Read More Podcast: Dancing the talk January 20, 2013 | Expressive Change | Podcast| In this podcast, we speak to Kiran Gulrajani, who challenges us to take a lighter and more exploratory approach to living out our values in our work. We had the pleasure of hosting him and his CoEvolve colleague Rohit Sasvehalli at our home during their recent visit to South Africa. Our intention was to […] Read More Rayat-Bahra Teachers College September 22, 2011 | Expressive Change | Tana Paddock| 5 Comments The landscape turns from deep green to sepia-yellow as we drive out of the tree-lined streets of the city and onto a dusty road lined with wheat fields. At some point we return to pavement and I glance out the back window to see a horse gallop across the road in our wake. Our taxi slows and turns onto a smaller road, meanders through an enclave of large white-washed structures, and comes to a stop in front of a cheerful looking building with students streaming through its front doors. Read More Sneak preview of 'A Delicate Activism' July 17, 2014 | Expressive Change | Allan Kaplan & Sue Davidoff| 1 Comment One of the gifts of being based in South Africa has been the opportunity to get to know Allan Kaplan and Sue Davidoff and their work at The Proteus Initiative. We’re excited to share a sneak preview of their soon-to-be-launched short book A Delicate Activism: A Radical Approach to Change. Read More SWOT hack November 17, 2014 | Expressive Change | Rachel Griner| The following reflection was written by Rachel Griner, a new contributor to Organization Unbound, based in Dubai, who is keen to help businesses engage more deeply and authentically with social purpose and hone their capacity for social innovation. We’re excited to learn from her experiments. Read More The heart of Einstein September 8, 2013 | Expressive Change | Veena Vasista| When I recently came across Einstein’s explanation of his statement, I felt relieved and excited to discover that indeed he was instructing us to use more than our mind and ego-driven analysis to work through problems. Knowing this, I take it further to imagine that by ‘higher levels’ he meant higher levels of […] Read More Unknowing May 30, 2010 | Expressive Change | Warren Nilsson| 1 Comment The theme of vulnerability that Tana introduced a few posts ago is an important one for me. Like Tana, I have noticed that one of the strongest threads running through expressive organizations I have spent time with is their willingness to face up to and explore their vulnerability. At a personal level, people share their […] Read More Vulnerability as a strength May 11, 2010 | Expressive Change | Tana Paddock| 9 Comments I recently finished reading the book Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change, by Adam Kahane. A number of the themes he raised in the book have had a kind of haunting effect on me. One point that I keep revisiting is the idea of approaching vulnerability as a source of wisdom rather […] Read More When our first instinct is to run away . . . July 11, 2011 | Expressive Change | Warren Nilsson| 2 Comments I once asked a guy named Pedro, who had spent his life founding and working in one of the Mondragon industrial cooperatives, what his most engaging organizational experience had been. He gave me a kind of half-smile. “It was when we went bankrupt.” Read More
